Letters to the Editor
amthoma
Published Letters: 22 Editor's Choice: 4
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I'm OK
[Read the article: If Britney Spears shouldn't be naked in front of her kids, what about me?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm 34 and my mom walked around naked quite a bit when I was a child (and no, she wasn't a nudist or a hippie). I don't think I'm screwed up as a result and in fact I think I have a fairly healthy body image because by being comfortable in her nudity, she made it clear to me that a body is just a body, and there's nothing shameful about it. Perhaps the only problematic by-product is that *I* felt comfortable running around naked and would often run outside without my top on (I was 4, OK?). My parents used to laugh and call me "Miss Modesty," which I thought must have been a great compliment.
I feel sorry for my friends who rarely feel comfortable being nude because their parents made them feel shameful about it. Couldn't the parents see that shame about nudity translates to shame about the body itself? Hell, maybe if some of these women had seen their mothers naked, they wouldn't be so freaked out about a little bit of cellulite here and there. Or asymmetrical breasts, stretch marks, etc.
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Twilight of the Books
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Relax . . . apparently we won't need either books or readers, according to this article in last week's New Yorker--we're supposedly entering into an era of "secondary orality":
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain/?currentPage=1
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Energy efficiency
[Read the article: What will YOU do with your fiscal stimulus check?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Get a new hot-water heater, since the current one is almost 20 years old and well beyond its last legs.
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Sure, they read . . .
[Read the article: What's the matter with kids today?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and they also plagiarize. Constantly. Turning in critical analyses lifted from Sparknotes is irresistible, I guess, though most of us are savvy about the websites students routinely use (luckily, they're fairly lazy about their sources). Take a look at the increasingly Byzantine process colleges and universities have to follow in order to prevent and penalize plagiarism. Yes, yes, there has always been scholastic dishonesty and always will be, but my colleagues and I have seen a huge rise in plagiarism in the last 5-10 years (many departments now employ databases that identify lifted passages in student essays--we're entering into a technological stalemate with those we teach). Often, when the students are confronted, they are more dismayed about getting caught than the deed itself. It's frustrating, sad, and it would frankly bewilder me if I didn't know that they had operated this way all through the years of their elementary and secondary education. The internet is a wonderful tool, but it can't teach them ethics and critical thinking--that's our job.
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Yuck.
[Read the article: The best-laid plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Really. Just yuck.
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Carter and Sokol
[Read the article: Why can't I find a relationship that will last?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I second the recommendation for Carter and Sokol's _He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships_. I generally don't like self-help books, but after a counselor literally put it in my hand after a few sessions in which I described a relationship trajectory that sounds very much like the LW's, I decided to go ahead and read it. It focuses less on the choices we make and more about *why* we make them. As a result of reading about my own patterns, I stopped saying "why me?" and replaced that with "D'oh!" I can't say I'm 100% better today, but hey, the book actually helped me more than therapy ever did.